On Jul 9, 2007, at 10:35 AM, Peter Versteegen wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I'm relatively new to Ruby and haven't programmed in a while and am  
> trying to get back  into a good programming habit.
>
> In the reference:  http://www.caliban.org/ruby/rubyguide.shtml#ri
>
> it states that, in irb, if you do 42.<Tab> you get a list of all  
> the methods that pertain to the class 42, a very useful function,  
> except that it doesn't work on my system (Mac OS 10.4.10, and ruby  
> 1.8.6 and irb 0.9.5(05/04/13)  -- Note the date on irb!)
>
> Also, when I do ri I get a list that ends with (END).  I can't find  
> a clean exit from it (ctrl z seems to be the only thing that  
> works), but it leaves, using ps, a suspended process.
>
> How can I cleanup all of this?
>
> Thanks.
>
> Pete Versteegen
> -----------------------
> pversteegen / gcnetmail.net

Put these lines into a file .irbrc in your home directory

require 'rubygems'
require 'irb/completion'

You could also just type them into your irb session to try them out.

The "END" in ri's output is actually a prompt from the pager  
"less" (in all likelihood if you've not changed it).  You should be  
able to get out with 'q'.  See `man less` or type 'h' instead of  
'q'.  You can also tell ri to send output directly rather than  
through a pager like less with a '-T' option, for example:  ri -T  
File.exist?

-Rob

Rob Biedenharn		http://agileconsultingllc.com
Rob / AgileConsultingLLC.com